Vienna: Super Tourists

Because we were unable to see a concert at the Opera House last night, the first stop for the day was a tour of the Opera House. At 10:00, Diane and I went on an awesome guided tour though the whole building. We sat in the seats to learn about the building's history, walked on stage, (it is huge!), toured the intermission rooms, saw the really expensive VIP intermission room (€500 for one 20 min intermission), and learned about the work that goes into the operas. 250 people are hired for the whole season just to take down and construct the sets! The last Thursday before Ash Wednesday, there is a special dance show and he whole stage and seating area is turned into a dance floor. It costs €250 euros to enter the building and people can buy whole boxes for €18,000!! The show starts at 10pm and ends at 5am, and the crew has a few hours to deconstruct the setting to get it ready for a regular opera. Crazy!

After the tour, Diane and I wanted to do a brewery tour of the Ottakringer Brewery. We made it to the shop but there were no tours. Bummer! That didn't stop us from trying a sampler and we both had very good lemon radler beers. Best part--no open container laws! After a quick lunch, we had spotted another Zanoni & Zanoni place (best ice cream ever), so I tried a few more flavors including hazelnut and 'cookies.' Just as good as I remembered.

Then we began our walking tour. We started with the backside of the Hofburg Palace--majorly impressive. The palace is the former seat of the monarchy and houses a lot of museums now including the Sisi Museum, the museum of ethnology, the Spanish riding school and be Vienna boys' choir. After this, we saw the Art History and Natural History Museums. We didn't go in, but just admired the impressive architecture. They mirror one another and face each other across an area with greenery and fountains. We continue the walk and saw the Parliament building, the AMAZING front of the Hapsburg Palace, the unexpectedly beautiful Volksgarden, the Rathaus building, (city hall), and finished up at the University of Vienna. All of these buildings, including the Opera House and several others, are along the 'ring' around the city. They were built when the emperor demolished the city wall in the 1800s and replaced it with tons of gorgeous buildings.

After the walking tour, we ventured a little ways out of the center of the city to a town called Grinzing. The atmosphere is described as a typical small Austrian town, and it is known for its wine taverns. Diane and I were so tired walking around that we didn't see much of the town but what we did see was very cute. We then opted to go back to the hostel around 3:30 for a little rest. I fell asleep 3 pages into my kindle and woke again at 5, ready to travel again. We started by going back to Stephenplatz to do some souvenir shopping. We happened to go into a beautiful church on our way to the Museum Quarter. We saw all of the museums while there and saw that that is the very hip and trendy part of the city. From there we wandered to the Rathaus again because it is the film festival. There were tons of international food carts set up, (but the food carts were very classy!), so we got dinner. We both got Chinese food and it was really good. There were tons of people there and lots or young people were getting drinks or eating food. The food was all served on white plates and there were servers cleaning up--I was very impressed. We sat in some bleachers and watched the beginning of an opera show on the big screen before deciding that it wasn't fun to not understand what was going on because it was in German. To finish the night, I had been dying to try kaiserschmarnn and so I finally got to taste it. It is a rich pancake with raisins and I got the apple version with applesauce. Yum.

All in all, I'd say Diane and I got pretty much the full experience in about 2 1/2 days. We packed our days with activities, museums, culture, food, walking and sight seeing. I am dead tired now, but I still have another exciting few days since we go to Stockholm tomorrow! Our flight is at 11 and we will get to Stockholm around 1. We stay overnight tomorrow and finally return to Skövde on Thursday night. Whew. This had been amazing so far! Got another couple hundred pictures from today to prove it. :) Good night!